§707-715 Terroristic threatening, defined.
A person commits the offense of terroristic threatening if the person
threatens, by word or conduct, to cause bodily injury to another person or
serious damage or harm to property, including the pets or livestock, of another
or to commit a felony:

(1) With the intent to terrorize, or in reckless
disregard of the risk of terrorizing, another person; or

(2) With intent to cause, or in reckless disregard of
the risk of causing evacuation of a building, place of assembly, or facility of
public transportation. [L 1972, c 9, pt of §1; am L 1979, c 184, §1(1); gen ch
1993; am L 2012, c 214, §1]

Cross References

Definitions of states of mind, see §702-206.

Case Notes

Cited: 133 H. 235 (App.), 325 P.3d 647 (2014).

COMMENTARY ON §707-715

[The following commentary is based on the original proposal
which differed from the Code as enacted, as indicated in the Supplemental
Commentary below.]

This section is addressed to conduct causing serious alarm
for personal safety, or the disruption of public services or activities. In
the first instance, it is an offense against the individual of substantial
magnitude and danger, even allowing for the lack of any actual harm. This
danger is recognized for two reasons. (1) It is easily seen that people who
are attempting to avoid what they believe to be a serious harm may often take
action so precipitous as to harm themselves. Where the actual harm occurs, the
threatener may be guilty of a more serious offense. But where the harm does
not occur, this section permits conviction for the inchoate threat. (2) The
civil law has come to recognize the validity of psychological trauma; recovery
may now be had for the intentional infliction of such injury even though the
conduct of the offender had no physical connection with the victim. If such
conduct constitutes a recognized substantial danger, it follows that a penal
sanction may appropriately be imposed for conduct which intentionally or
recklessly creates the danger.

In the second instance, the magnitude of the inconvenience
and attendant dangers involved in the disruption of public services and
activities warrant the imposition of the penal sanction.[1]

In both cases, because threats represent far less of a danger
than does consummation of the criminal objective, the offense is only graded as
a misdemeanor. The sanction is more commensurate with the inconvenience of
personal apprehension of danger, or of public disruption, than with the
possibility of the threatened evil being accomplished. In the latter case, of
the accomplished evil, the various attempt and substantive sections will deal
more severely with the conduct and results involved.

Previous Hawaii law contained no prohibition of the conduct
proscribed by this section.

SUPPLEMENTAL COMMENTARY ON §707-715

When the legislature adopted the Code in 1972, it departed
from §715 of the Proposed Code by deleting the phrase "serious public
inconvenience" as a basis of criminal liability and by deleting the word "public"
preceding the word "building."

As stated in Conference Committee Report No. 2 (1972):

Your Committee has agreed to delete
the phrase "serious public inconvenience" as a basis of criminal
liability for terroristic threatening because of its possible unconstitutional
vagueness. Your Committee has also agreed to have this statute apply to
private as well as public buildings by deletion of the word "public."

Act 184, Session Laws 1979, broadened this section to include
threats to commit a felony.

Act 214, Session Laws 2012, amended this section by
including pets and livestock as property that, if threatened to be damaged or
harmed, may constitute the offense of terroristic threatening. The legislature
found that Act 214 clarified that threatening to cause serious damage to the
property of another person includes threatening to damage or harm the pets and
livestock of that person under the terroristic threatening offense. Senate
Standing Committee Report No. 2451, Conference Committee Report No. 22-12.

Case Notes

Defendant's constitutional right to unanimous verdict not
violated as section defines a single criminal offense; paragraphs (1) and (2)
constitute alternative means of establishing the mens rea of the offense of
terroristic threatening--either one giving rise to the same criminal
culpability. 92 H. 577, 994 P.2d 509 (2000).

A specific unanimity jury instruction was not required where
defendant's conduct, as alleged and proved by the prosecution, constituted a
continuing course of conduct "set on foot by a single impulse and operated
by an unintermittent force", with "one general intent ... and one
continuous plan". 95 H. 440, 24 P.3d 32 (2001).

Defendant's first degree terroristic threatening conviction
remanded for new trial where instructions did not sufficiently inform jury
that, to constitute a "true threat", defendant's threatening
utterance was objectively susceptible to inducing fear of bodily injury in a
reasonable person at whom the threat was directed and who was familiar with the
circumstances under which the threat was uttered. 95 H. 465, 24 P.3d 661
(2001).

Defendant's first degree terroristic threatening conviction
remanded for new trial where trial court failed to instruct jury that it could
consider relevant attributes of both defendant and the subject of the allegedly
threatening utterance in determining whether the subject's fear of bodily
injury, as allegedly induced by defendant's threatening utterance, was
objectively reasonable under the circumstances in which the threat was
uttered. 95 H. 465, 24 P.3d 661 (2001).

Neither the free speech clause of the U.S. Constitution nor
that of the Hawaii constitution impose a temporal "immediacy"
requirement that must be met before words become subject to criminal prosecution
as "true threats". 95 H. 465, 24 P.3d 661 (2001).

Defendant's claim of justification, in defense against
prosecution for terroristic threatening, was established regardless of whether
or not defendant used deadly force. 1 H. App. 167, 616 P.2d 229 (1980).

One may be charged with a violation of §707-716(1)(d) when a
dangerous instrument is employed in connection with a threat to property as
proscribed by this section. 88 H. 477 (App.), 967 P.2d 674 (1998).